


bps challenge responses

by inverse



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball, Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of challenge responses to basketballpoetsociety.</p><p>1. momoi ruminates on two friends. (skin mag, aomine/kise)<br/>2. seirin wins the winter cup. hyuuga thinks about the aftermath. (good karma, hyuuga + kiyoshi)<br/>3. three's a crowd. (the missing piece, aomine/kagami/kuroko)<br/>4. midorima plays some tennis. (there but for the grace of god go i, midorima gen, tenipuri crossover)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. skin mag (aomine/kise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for challenge 12, battle of the otps.

This one time outside a convenience store, after you were all done with practice, Ki-chan is caught by a gaggle of fangirls and instantly cornered like a mouse in a trap, surrounded by many hungry, squealing cats. Predictably, no one else in the team goes to his help, and being a fellow female, you know the consequences of barging in on a full-on fight to the death for a piece of the common prey, so you grin apologetically at Ki-chan and head into 7-11 with the rest.

You follow Tetsu-kun to the freezer, where he picks out several popsicles for everyone (“Would Momoi-san like one?” he asks, and the fully air-conditioned shop space suddenly feels like how the weather was in Hong Kong, when you visited last summer), and then promptly heads for the cashier. There’s a long queue, so he tells you to wait elsewhere, and you oblige.

Dai-chan, as usual, is standing in front of his usual haunt – the magazine rack, holding one of those disgusting gravure publications in his hands. Except today, it’s upside down. You follow his line of sight. It’s directed right at the mini fanmeeting going on outside, where Ki-chan is feverishly signing autograph after autograph. You’d have thought that they posted an official announcement outside the store. _Teen idol Kise Ryouta will be here on 21 September, at 19:00!! Get a chance to win a free VIP ticket for every 900 yen spent on Meiji products!!! While stocks last._

Narrowing your eyes, you whap him on the back as hard as you can. Horikita Mai’s face hits the dirt, and Dai-chan curses, bending down to pick up the magazine. “What the hell, Satsuki?”

“Ahh, Ki-chan really does have everything,” you sing-song. “Good looks, great personality, talented at sports. No wonder a gorilla like Dai-chan’s feeling jealous.”

“Yes,” he says defiantly, stuffing the magazine back onto the shelf. “Just look at that girl standing in front of him. What a huge rack. It could compete with yours. And she’s way prettier than you, you sow.”

It is about two years later, when you’re sitting on a bench on the side of a basketball court, holding Ki-chan’s data to your chest, that you realise that Dai-chan was probably never really concerned about all the things Ki-chan was better at, or had in abundance. In Dai-chan’s world, basketball is the only real language, regardless of any other things he seems to hold in high regard, and at that time, when you were all in middle school, it was a language that Ki-chan was still learning how to speak. A long time ago, Dai-chan might have wished for someone else who was able to communicate fluently with him in this medium, and you personally thought the person who would finally achieve it was going to be Ki-chan. Not Midorin, not Akashi-kun, certainly not Muk-kun. They were always far too removed from how he approached the sport, and Ki-chan was all too willing to figure out all the secrets behind how Dai-chan played. But these days, Dai-chan doesn’t seem ready to accept that somebody might, one day, catch up to him.

The whistle goes – that’s another two points for Touou. On the opposite side of the court, Ki-chan is standing near the three-point line, waiting for a pass, his eyes sharp, his hair matted with sweat. Regardless of how this match ends, you think, it will be nigh impossible to achieve both outcomes. It will be one or the other, and you hope that it will be the former.


	2. good karma (hyuuga + kiyoshi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for challenge 13, beyond the generation of miracles.

When the buzzer finally goes and Seirin finally does win the Winter Cup, of course Riko is the first one to cry. You should tell her that her wailing is a little unbecoming for someone who’s always so in charge all the time, really, but as soon as you catch sight of the scoreboard and the disbelieving crowd starts to make an enormous amount of noise, you realise, this is it, you’ve won. Kuroko, looking a bit teary, is trying to help Kagami amble along, because he can hardly stand; Izuki is rushing towards the bench, where Koga and Mitobe and the other first-years are waiting to give out triumphant high-fives. And Kiyoshi’s just standing there, hands on his hips, facing the stands, grinning like a fool, as if that was the best game he’s ever had the privilege of playing. For dinner that night, you go to a barbeque restaurant, and Riko’s father actually offers to pay, but not before issuing death threats about the consequences of taking advantage of his precious daughter.

A couple of days later, when the euphoria has worn off a little, that’s when you really start to contemplate the entire how and why behind it all. Kuroko’s highly interesting former teammates aside, it’s taken so much for this team to have come this far, and in so short a time span. It was probably a coincidence that you had to play them so many times this competition, sure, but you like to think – riding the train to school, eating lunch in your homeroom, taking out the laundry, during shooting practice, whenever – that the identity of the team, most of all, transcended everything else. Still, for a team that started from practically nothing, it’s pretty damn amazing. There’s still a certain degree of disbelief to it all.

There are other things to think about, of course, which all of you have simply put aside for the duration of the tournament. Now that it’s over, thinking about it is unavoidable. Surgery is a tricky thing. Athletes do it all the time for all sorts of reasons – thigh strains, elbow injuries, broken bones; you name it, they’ve done it. But you’re not a qualified professional, and that makes you paranoid about success rates. You’ve heard of promising sportsmen undergoing operations for seemingly minor things, and then failing to return to form, even years later. It’s probably worse when the case in point involves an idiot who deliberately puts off treatment for one whole year so that he can win some (relatively speaking) small-time high school tournament with his teammates. You once overheard a conversation between Riko and her father at the gym, and this was what he had to say about Kiyoshi, that he had tremendous natural talent, not only with regard to technique and skill and making plays on the court, but also in terms of intuition and analysis and leadership and making snap decisions, and it would be a real shame if a player of this quality went to waste. You agreed silently. There were fifteen minutes more to go on your treadmill programme.

At the last training session of the year, right before club activities draw to a close for the exam period, Riko brings up the untouchable topic. Judging by the looks on everyone’s faces, some of them were probably already anticipating it. The rest of them who are not in the know just look stunned. You keep quiet. “Don’t look so upset, it’s not like I’ll be gone forever,” Kiyoshi reassures, “and I’ll drop by whenever I can to help out. Right, Riko?”

“You had better,” she says, but you think you can hear her choke on one of those words.

“Just don’t go losing all your games because I’m not around,” he teases. Then, replacing that playful expression with a small smile, he says, “Just kidding. I have faith in you guys.”

“Of course you do. Just take care of your own matters first, moron,” you grumble back. Privately, of course, other than hoping that everything will be fine, you also suspect that everything will be fine. A little more than a year ago, some reckless idiot who really, really liked basketball built a team from scratch, just by being ridiculously hard-headed and persistent about it. Then, even though he got screwed over, he still returned, determined to be a better player than his old self. Held out for his team, always gave his all in games, never showed any sign of wanting to quit, no matter how much his condition prevented him from doing so. That’s why you know things will work out. Fortune favours the bold, after all, and of the people you know, there is no one braver than he is.


	3. the missing piece (aomine/kagami/kuroko)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for challenge 16, timed writing.

It started pouring five minutes into their game. The rain came out of nowhere – it was still sunny when they arrived about fifteen minutes earlier, and it was still sunny when raindrops the size of small rocks hailed down upon them. Aomine insisted that they could still play, what little hair he had beginning to drip with rainwater, but Kise was the first one to grab his bag, hold it over his precious golden hair, and run across the street in search of shelter. Kuroko decided to follow suit. There was a limited number of days to summer vacation, and it wouldn’t be nice if he had to spend a quarter of it at home nursing a cold.

They bought two cheap umbrellas at a nearby convenience store and shared them while walking over to Kagami’s house. “I don’t quite like the idea of letting you guys make yourselves at home,” he said when they arrived, glancing at Kise and Aomine, who were peering curiously in through the front door, “but it’s only polite, so make yourselves at home.”

Kise walked around the living room, gaping at all the NBA memorabilia Kagami had put up on the walls, but Aomine followed Kagami right into his bedroom and demanded for a change of clothes very loudly. “Get out,” was the equally loud response, and Aomine soon emerged with a towel draped over his head and an irritated-looking Kagami trailing behind him. It appeared that annoying the hell out of Kagami was Aomine’s new hobby these days. He sported a dark grin on his face as he trailed Kagami into the kitchen.

“Aominecchi seems to be having fun,” Kise remarked, sitting down next to Kuroko on the couch, having obtained a can of Coke from Kagami’s fridge without asking. Kuroko had to admit that he was a little startled, which was rare, because he was normally the one startling people.

“You’re really not standing on ceremony, Kise-kun.”

Kise laughed. He said, “What can I do, Kagamicchi is too nice,” but there was something deliberate in that gaze of his as he stared into Kuroko’s own eyes, as if he meant something else with those words. Kise could be unsettling if he wanted to be.

Basketball, in Kuroko’s middle school days, was mostly a game about scoring. But right before and right after that, Kuroko had always felt that it was an incredibly human game, one that needed you to feel joy and sorrow and pain and, most of all, overwhelming disbelief and amazement when you finally understood what it was like to put in the effort to play and not just to win. For Kuroko, it was regrettable that he couldn’t experience the exhilaration first-hand by jumping or dunking or shooting or anything that required height or skill, but at least there were the few people through which he could channel that. That, however, made it necessary for Kuroko to play in reliance of a greater goal, in reliance of a bigger person, like a pivot in a lever, like a rook to a king. Of course, these days, he was trying to change it, but that was more or less his central role in a game from which he could hardly deviate, give or take a few degrees. Basketball was an incredibly human game, but it would be better, Kuroko sometimes thought, just sometimes, if you could disentangle its humanity from the people who were actually playing it.

*

“You lost,” Aomine sneered, “so you’re paying,” and Kagami scowled and made his way to the counter. “And make it upsized,” Aomine continued, clearly taking delight in subjecting Kagami to his beck and call. They looked for seats while Kagami was still in the queue, and managed to snag a booth seat in the corner of the restaurant.

“I’m glad you seem to be having fun when you’re around him,” Kuroko said, as they sat down.

“What, Kagami?”

“Yes.”

“Does it seem like it,” Aomine replied blandly, slouching and putting his hands behind his head, “it feels kind of normal to me?”

Kuroko paused. Maybe he was reading too much into things. Maybe it was just his imagination, how Aomine would turn up progressively early for all their one-on-ones, pretending that he had nothing to do and misread the train schedule, how he seemed to just accidentally obtain extra pairs of sneakers and offered them to anybody who wanted them, when those shoes were sporting very particular sizes, how he would linger at Kagami’s house after games, saying that he was too hungry to go home, and maybe Kagami could cook something for everyone? Kuroko sneaked a glance at the counters, where Kagami was standing in the middle of a very long queue, frowning up at the menu, perhaps deciding the ratio in which he should buy the three different seasonal sandwiches Maji Burger was offering. He took a deep breath and turned back to Aomine.

“Aomine-kun,” he began, “I


	4. there but for the grace of god go i (midorima)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for challenge 19, crossovers.

Midorima had known Akashi for a rather long time, ever since they were ten years old. They played basketball together in middle school, but before that, because of the business relations of their families, they were already friendly competitors at chess and shogi, and sometimes played other sports together, when it was just the two of them, of similar age, at large gatherings. Midorima was averse to the horseriding that Akashi so enjoyed, because it made him nauseous, but other sports of choice included squash, tennis, golf, and of course, the occasional game of one-on-one in basketball. Previous to becoming schoolmates and teammates, such contact was seldom – perhaps once every one or two months, but after that, the frequency of such meetings increased.

Of course they both knew they would choose basketball when they both enrolled in Teikou. Akashi’s talents were better applied to a team sport that required the use of strategy, and Midorima appreciated basketball for the ruthless economic efficiency of its points system. Nonetheless, Akashi insisted on playing other sports for leisure from time to time – focusing too overtly on just one game, he felt, dulled the senses and diminished opportunities for learning, leading one to develop a robust tendency towards having tunnel vision. They treated these other sports more seriously than amateurs would, but less seriously than they treated basketball, somewhat like having a detached, yet healthy scientific interest in them. For instance, Midorima would never undo the bandages on his fingers just to get a better grip on a tennis or squash racket, but the theories and the techniques, he learned them well.

Midorima rather enjoyed tennis. It was more confrontational than squash, more cerebral than golf, and less dizzying than horseriding. It was also more accessible than all three. Most of all, it was one of those things that he was almost always better at than Akashi was. God was fair, and He gave what was due. Midorima supposed that even if your eyes were good enough to perceive microscopic shifts in muscle movement, that wouldn’t make up for the shittiest backhand in the world, or the lack of ability to improve quality of said backhand.

He met a certain Atobe through Akashi’s acquaintance, whom he guessed was the son of a family business partner. “Shintarou, I want you to meet Atobe-san,” Akashi introduced, gesturing at the newcomer with the graceful hand of a well-mannered host. “He is an excellent tennis player.”

“If you are interested, we could have a little faceoff,” said Atobe, neither confirming nor denying what Akashi claimed, but judging by the look on his haughty, aristocratic face, he more or less wanted to show off, and was probably thinking that he was doing a bit of charity by allowing Midorima to duel directly with him. Nonetheless, Midorima was too polite to refuse, considering the circumstances.

They played a game in Akashi’s sprawling courtyard. Atobe thrashed him 6-0. It had barely been thirty minutes. Not since when he forgot to bring his lucky item to school on the day of a class relay race in third grade had he been defeated in such humiliating fashion. He would have to check the condition of the Rilakkuma coin purse he was bringing around today; perhaps the zipper was broken. Feeling suitably embarrassed, he moved towards the net to shake his opponent’s hand.

“You have potential,” Atobe said, as if he was doling out valuable life advice to Midorima, “but you should stick with basketball.”

“I plan to,” Midorima replied, gathering himself to his full height and staring down at the top of Atobe’s head, which was approximately twenty centimetres away. It was like staring down at a ruder, smugger Akashi, with fancier hair. Skip the small talk, he thought, he’d like to see how this one fared when faced with a box-and-one defence.

“Shintarou plays for leisure. As do I,” Akashi commented. There could have been a hint of defensiveness in there, but it was also a mix of derision and disappointment and other words beginning with the letter ‘d’, which left Midorima sulking throughout the entire duration of their afternoon tea, although Atobe’s vast knowledge regarding baroque classical musicians provided some respite. It was nice to meet somebody else with such profound understanding of the Well-Tempered Clavier as he. That was, of course, until Akashi started discussing leadership strategies with Atobe, who was, apparently, the sole captain of his school’s 200-strong tennis club.

“I do not have a vice-captain,” Atobe proclaimed, his pinky sticking out at an odd angle from his teacup as he sipped his Earl Grey. “True brilliance need only reside in the mind of one man, where leadership is concerned. To let any assistant rank as something that suggests more authority and seniority seems inappropriate, even incorrect, to me.”

“That is certainly an idea worth exploring,” Akashi mused, looking as if he was seriously contemplating it, and for the second time that day, Midorima felt like a member of the proletariat during a terrible period of class struggle.

Afterwards Midorima was slightly besotted with the state of Japanese middle school tennis for two whole weeks, somewhat against his will. Despite himself, his eyes would be drawn to tennis magazines at the newsstands he chanced upon in convenience stores. He’d never really paid attention to what happened in other sporting arenas, but it appeared that as with basketball, Japanese middle school tennis was also experiencing a sudden surge in precocious teenage talent.

Pro scouts were apparently going crazy with the thought of all that commission, reported one publication, what with schools in the Kantou region already producing several players worthy of competing at the national level, and possibly a few other schools in Kansai as well. One reporter even talked of a particular shot that could exert enough force to “possibly extinguish the dinosaurs, if they still existed”. What dreadful journalism. Ah, there it was, a short interview with Atobe himself on page 20, and he was more annoying-looking in print than he was in the flesh as Midorima remembered him to be. He got one whole splash page in his likeness, no doubt via his own request. He’d struck Midorima as being somebody who was very narcissistic.

“What?” Kise’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second when Midorima asked him if he had ever considered playing tennis. After all, Kise apparently had a track record of quitting clubs every two weeks before he settled on basketball. Then he said, “Well, I tried it once, but it was way too easy –”

“Perhaps you just haven’t been playing the right people. It is foolish to overestimate yourself like that,” Midorima said darkly, leaving Kise to wail, wildly confused, “What are you talking about?”

“I am terrible at anything that isn’t basketball,” Aomine volunteered from his corner of the room.

“No one asked for your opinion,” Midorima snapped.

“If you are still concerned about Atobe-san,” Akashi began, retrieving his blazer from his locker, “we will not be meeting much in the future, I suspect, so neither will you. And besides, it is unlike you to ruminate so much, Shintarou. Are you still thinking about that match?”

“Tennis is just one alternative mechanism through which I condition my body,” Midorima retorted, but Akashi was at least 25% correct, embarrassed as he was to admit to himself. And was that a barefaced admission that Akashi had intended for him to be a socialising aid?

“It must be about the other issue that was raised, then. Fret not, Shintarou, I assure you that you remain an integral part of this team.” Akashi put on his blazer, offering a rare smile, but he sounded almost triumphant in his assertion.


End file.
